Monday, December 23, 2013

Eh let's face it, this is about the only new piece of writing you're getting out of me before 2014, so here is, enjoy. No okay, really I'm just sticking it here so I have a quick link for it when people ask in future. I'm all about the future, right now.Meanwhile, we're almost ready to band-camp my album for digital download. Then you'll have no excuse. Anyway...RANDALL STEPHENS

Approximately 14 Billion years ago an infinitely dense and massive singularity exploded, creating the universe. Then nothing much happened. In 1980 “The Empire Strikes Back” came and Randall Stephens was born.

He writes poetry about other poetry, cycling, sexuality, masculinity, dinosaurs and your boyfriend. People have called Randall controversial. Randall has called people losers, they’re both right.

Randall is currently living in Denial, and has toured extensively through other emotional states throughout Australia, as well as New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia and Borneo. He's also competed in slams in London and New York but didn’t do that well, so don’t tell him I mentioned that.

His work has been published by erotic fiction label Little Raven, Australian Poetry’s online journal Sotto, and broadcast on 3RRR and 3CR radio. Randall currently serves as President of the Melbourne Poets Union, helping to organise, curate and hosts regular monthly readings.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

You think about all that stuff when you're in hospital,
well yeah like getting arrested,
or like that principles office wait,
like car breakdown in the middle of nowhere,
there's a guilt for ending up stuck there,
but the fault isn't the one you're probably supposed to be groping for,
it's not in a reflect-on-your-bad-behaviour way,
more in a wincing man-you-slipped-up-and-that's-why-y'got busted way

You remember beginning a Vipassana meditation course,
fresh with vast stretches of self lying ahead,
horizon-line miles of bad road,
so sure there has to be a point, you're equally sure you'll miss it,
like you need to punish yourself for things you never did,
and punish yourself for all the things you never done
your consciousness, conscience and libido expand like gases into any size room they put you in
you fart,
you eat worse,
you think about asylum seekers and Star Wars,
you wish people were here,
then try and get rid of the nes who show,
breathe in these books you finally got the time to read,
then the pages put you to sleep, and you wake up needing to piss so bad you have an erection.
think about how you never used to leave your room,
for all your books, videos and model kits,
your mum said you'd adapt really well to prison
and that maybe you'd end up there.

The writer in you wants to sketch out;
the heart-cleaving face you saw,
some sorry character
holding his wife's hand
because that's all he can do now,
against the beep of machines,
or write whimsy about the paraplegic haemophilia counsellor,
who came back to work his old job to feel useful instead of rotting away on a DSP,
after a four-storey fall took his legs,
you can't talk to him about your problems because
...what the fuck man.

The moralist wins over the writer, in you decide these stories seem gratuitous cheap shots,
like some shit Shane Koyczan might do, and get away with.

You never get away with shit,
is why you're here.

Oh and then there's all the fear,
scared like maybe you've lived too long already,
and that liver cancer was supposed to get you,
scared to death by living,
scared of big and heavy and empty life is,
trying to fill a whole life up without 2.3 kid-set-top-box mendacity,
scared,
like punishing yourself